“Well! Well! Well!” he said, benevolently. “Aha! Something very savoury there, I think, Rosaleen!”
“I hope you’ll like it,” she said, smiling.
“Will it be long?”
“Not an instant. I’ll set the table now. Shall we wait for Miss Amy?”
“I think not. I think not. Better get it over with, eh?”
She smiled again, and putting up the ironing board, began at once to lay the table for three. The venerable old gentleman had vanished into his room, and was seen no more until she knocked on his door.
“Dinner!” she said.
He came out again very promptly, closing the door behind him, and took his place at the head of the table. He bowed his grey head, Rosaleen bent her sleek one, and he said a solemn grace. And then set to work to carve the scraggy little steak. It didn’t take much to make him grateful; their standard of living wasn’t exalted; tough meat, with potatoes and a canned vegetable, that was the regulation; then as a dessert either canned fruit or a pie from the baker’s. And the lettuce, which it was considered necessary for his health that Mr. Humbert should eat every evening.
Rosaleen sat opposite him, still in her apron, thankful for once for his inhuman indifference. He wouldn’t notice that she had been crying. They didn’t talk; they never did. What could they possibly have to say to each other?
The light from two jets in the gasolier over the table shone clearly, illumined every corner. All quite neat and clean, with a sort of bright stuffiness about it; a greenish brown carpet on the floor, a couch bed concealed by a green corduroy cover, four varnished oak chairs spaced primly against the wall. In one corner stood a sewing machine covered with a lace tablecloth, on which was a fern in a pot decorated with a frill of green crêpe paper. On the mantelpiece stood a geranium similarly ornamented, and on the table another. From the gasolier and from the curtain pole over the doorway were suspended half coconut shells filled with ferns. Hanging in the windows by gilt chains were two “transparencies”; one was moonlight in Venice, all a ghastly green, and the other was a church with lighted windows gleaming redly over the snow: no doubt they were to compensate for the lack of any view except that of the wall of a courtyard. Nothing in this familiar hideousness to arrest Rosaleen’s glance; she looked restlessly about, longing for the venerable old gentleman to have done with his coconut custard pie.